A US Serviceman kills 16 Afghan people

gizmo555

Morphéus wrote: »

you wont see the US bury some alleged terrorist up to his neck in the sand and allow a crazy mob of overly god fearing 3rd world folks throw bricks at his head until it kills him...

No, they just employ tactics like these:

The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau [of Investigative Journalism] for the "Sunday Times" has revealed . . .

. . . research by the Bureau has found that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children. A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.

I had to laugh at the comments by the acting US ambassador to Afghanistan to the effect that the US abhors the killing of innocent civilians, when it has for years routinely employed these tactics, which are certain to result in widespread civilian casualties, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

First Aid Ireland

Presumably the guy was very seriously mentally ill.

Talk of handing people like this over to regimes where they'll be treated brutally is premature (not that i think that's ever right, regardless of someone's mental state).

People do things like this very often because they have no control over their mind. Is there any point in handing someone who's mentally ill over to be tortured and beaten? Well if we're only interested in retribution, then yes. But if we're interested in preventing things like this happening, then the focus should be on identifying these type of people earlier and getting them out of warzones.

OS119

gizmo555 wrote: »

...whataboutary...

is there some relevence to this case here, or are the politics of a persons government the deciding factor in whether they as an individual should recieve justice or just be strung up?

is it not hypocritical - perhaps as hypocritical as the US can be - to protest against whatever you see as injustice by the US but not be fussed about it in other circumstances?

or is injustice ok as long as its an American who's on the end of a rope?

First Aid Ireland

gizmo555 wrote: »

. . . research by the Bureau has found that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed

I'm not defending or condoning the loss of innocent life in war, but I'm just wondering how a figure of "between 282 and 535" civilians can be "credibly" reported.

I'm not for one second saying the figures are wrong. But if they were all that credible surely the lower estimate wouldn't be only 50% of the higher estimate.

gizmo555

OS119 wrote: »

is there some relevence to this case here

There is in my view. What justice did the civilians killed in the drone strikes mentioned receive? What greater hypocrisy could there be than the breast beating by the US ambassador over the civilian deaths in this incident, given the context of the routine slaughter of civilians by the US in drone strikes?

Morphéus is right - the US doesn't bury alleged terrorists up their necks in sand and stone them. Instead, they bury them up to their necks in the rubble of their houses and then kill anyone who has the temerity to attempt to rescue them. Or they kill lower level alleged terrorists in the hope that their superiors will attend their funerals so that they can bomb them, knowing that they will inevitably kill numerous civilians too.

Such tactics are IMO morally depraved and certainly don't warrant any claims of moral superiority over Morphéus's "crazy mob of overly god fearing 3rd world folks."

gizmo555

First Aid Ireland wrote: »

I'm not defending or condoning the loss of innocent life in war, but I'm just wondering how a figure of "between 282 and 535" civilians can be "credibly" reported.

I'm not for one second saying the figures are wrong. But if they were all that credible surely the lower estimate wouldn't be only 50% of the higher estimate.

A detailed explanation of the methodology used is here

The most relevant part to your question is probably this:

We report all instances where civilians are reported to have been killed or injured. Where accounts vary as to whether civilians or militants were killed, we report this and present a minimum and maximum reported number of casualties. We have also identified a number of cases where media sources refer only to ‘people’ killed (and not the more usual ‘militant’). Here we indicate that civilian casualties may be possible. Although we show a minimum and maximum range of civilians killed, other civilian deaths are likely to remain unreported, based on the findings of our field workers and others.

First Aid Ireland

There's not a lot of point in me reading about their methodology because I'm not a field statistician, so I'm not in a position to judge their methods. Most methods of collecting data have been validated externally, and people involved in its collection usually state this.

I'm just a little dubious about their numbers if they're getting such wide ranging results. usually standardised data collection methods give you similar results no matter who's doing them and are very reproducible, so that you can have a high level of confidence in their accuracy.

Like i said, its' not something I'm hugely bothered about. I was just curious about the broadness of their estimates and the simultaneous attachment of a "credible" label to the results/sources.

gizmo555 wrote: »

A detailed explanation of the methodology used is here

The most relevant part to your question is probably this:

We report all instances where civilians are reported to have been killed or injured. Where accounts vary as to whether civilians or militants were killed, we report this and present a minimum and maximum reported number of casualties. We have also identified a number of cases where media sources refer only to ‘people’ killed (and not the more usual ‘militant’). Here we indicate that civilian casualties may be possible. Although we show a minimum and maximum range of civilians killed, other civilian deaths are likely to remain unreported, based on the findings of our field workers and others.

gizmo555

First Aid Ireland wrote: »

I'm just a little dubious about their numbers if they're getting such wide ranging results. usually standardised data collection methods give you similar results no matter who's doing them and are very reproducible, so that you can have a high level of confidence in their accuracy.

I think the passage I quoted gives a succinct, understandable and reasonable explanation.

First Aid Ireland

gizmo555 wrote: »

I think the passage I quoted gives a succinct, understandable and reasonable explanation.

I think you're missing the point, though it's not a point that's worth huge argument.

If i say "I collected data from country X. My data collection tool was the Gizmo555 method, which has been shown to work when it was validated by Smith, johnston and mohammed in 2007. My results are.....". This is "credible" data.

If I say "I collected data from country X. I've used this data collection method. It's not been tested before to see how many people it misses and how many people it captures, and whether it captures people twice and a million other things, but it sounds smart. My results are....." this might be accurate data. But as things stand, it's not yet credible.

it's not a huge point. But i spent a lot of time in days of yore collecting population data and it's very very difficult and there's huge swathes of people missed and double counted and included or excluded incorrectly if you're not meticulous about your data collection tool. But the deeper argument is for another day i guess.

gizmo555

First Aid Ireland wrote: »

I think you're missing the point, though it's not a point that's worth huge argument.

No, I don't think I am. You asked a question, you've been given the short answer and referred to the longer answer. You don't accept the short answer but have said you won't make the effort to read the longer answer (which, by the way, expressly addresses the issues you've raised).

First Aid Ireland

gizmo555 wrote: »

No, I don't think I am. You asked a question, you've been given the short answer and referred to the longer answer. You don't accept the short answer but have said you won't make the effort to read the longer answer (which, by the way, expressly addresses the issues you've raised).

But it doesn't. It references a paper which asks for people to publish their methodology (the the very same reason I'm asking about it...ie so we know what collection tools people are using)

RMD

OS119 wrote: »

would he get a fair trial?

Reports state he gave himself up and admitted to it upon turning himself in. There's no "fair trial" in this as the trial is already decided, he's guilty and there's little else to be said. The only thing that will effect this trial is whether he is considered to be insane or not.

aero1310

The way I would think about it is how it would be handled if that were to happen in the US by someone from Afghanistan, he would most likely be called a terrorist and sentenced to death. But when it us, it becomes a mental disorder and 16 innocent lives are lost because someone had a "breakdown."

I have little sympathy for him. I don't really see it as a disorder. I see signs of anger; friends leg getting blown off, probably has seen lots of other friends die, marital issues, and sure there's is a lot of hate for the people that live there. A lot of build up and he let loose. A very poor decision.

Although Afgan may have a shotty government, I beleive they should have to right to trial him. But hes lucky because US Military has more power and there gonna take care of the situation.

Lemming

aero1310 wrote: »

I have little sympathy for him. I don't really see it as a disorder. I see signs of anger; friends leg getting blown off, probably has seen lots of other friends die, marital issues, and sure there's is a lot of hate for the people that live there. A lot of build up and he let loose. A very poor decision.

We have no idea what has happened here; scant details if even. To start making such self-assured proclamations of certainty is foolish and verging on sheer arrogance. Was it some guy who just felt the urge to kill and is now pleading mental illness to get out of a tough sentence? Or a genuine case of someone who has simply been pushed passed their boundary to cope with what they have to see, hear, & deal with every day and is basically suffering from PTSD? We do not know, and I doubt we will until more details start to come out from the investigation.

I really do not believe the Afghan authorities capable of an impartial investigation on this at present; the amount of corrupt political & religious pressure & meddling that would be brought to bear on those investigating would be insane regardless of competency levels with regards requisite standards of criminal, forensic & medical analysis. As much as it should also be the Afghans investigating crime in their country, the reality is the guy would not see a fair trial. In ten or twenty years? Who knows, but not today in my opinion.

Manic Moran

[Mod]Tenuous thread distraction deleted.[/Mod]

gizmo555

First Aid Ireland wrote: »

I'm not defending or condoning the loss of innocent life in war, but I'm just wondering how a figure of "between 282 and 535" civilians can be "credibly" reported.

I'm not for one second saying the figures are wrong. But if they were all that credible surely the lower estimate wouldn't be only 50% of the higher estimate.

This piece in today's (29/05/12) New York Times goes a long way towards explaining the disagreement over the numbers of civilians being killed in drone strikes:

. . . Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent . . .

This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the “single digits” — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.

But in interviews, three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it “guilt by association” that has led to “deceptive” estimates of civilian casualties.

“It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the official said. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.”

Seems like we're back in the realms of "if he runs, he's VC; if he stands still he's well-disciplined VC."

tac foley

That's the problem, being at war with combatants who don't wear uniform.

I speak for real-life experinece.

tac

gizmo555

tac foley wrote: »

That's the problem, being at war with combatants who don't wear uniform.

I speak for real-life experinece.

tac

One can acknowledge the problem without necessarily concluding that the US's present "kill them all, God will know his own" response, while making a completely implausible pretence that all those killed are actually enemy combatants, is the solution.

As I think someone commented in the NYT article linked to, the policy means that if, for example, a drone strike hits a car killing a family of four, the father and, say, a teenage son are officially designated "militants" on no more evidence than their location, gender and age, while a mother and daughter in the same car are "civilians".

That discussion is probably better suited to the politics forums, but I just wanted to highlight the gross hypocrisy of the US ambassador's hand-wringing about the civilian deaths in this incident, while at the same time the US is pursuing policies and tactics which will inevitably result in widespread civilian deaths.

christmas2012

dreadful rip to those who lost their lives